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One of the reasons I was attracted to Shining world was because of the emphasis Ramji puts on knowledge (vs. experience). Makes total sense to me. However, there was an interesting twist in there for me. Self knowledge came relatively easily to me (thanks to the incredible SW teachers). However, I kept thinking of moksha as something that would happen in the distant future (after self-actualization, long-time in nididhyasana etc..). And then it occurred to me that I was thinking of Moksha as an experience that would happen in the future (once I attained perfect wisdom!).

It’s so funny now when I think about it—I had demystified enlightenment, but had in turn mystified moksha!

When I realized this, I burst out laughing. I, who knew so well that enlightenment was not an experience, now converted moksha into the ultimate experience. How embarrassing.

The promise of Vedanta is that liberation is available right here and right now. Self knowledge results in liberation in the midst of the most difficult situations while the play of life continues unabated.

Moksha is not a permanent state, but it is a constantly available state based on permanent knowledge. Even the greatest mahatmas get angry, get agitated, get flustered and so on but they bounce right back because of their deep and abiding self-knowledge. I know this because I have read the autobiographies or biographies of great Vedantins and they don’t hesitate to describe their moods.

But some of us seekers, often get upset when we experience the same moods. We say, I have self knowledge, so why did I fall under the spell of rajas or tamas or whatever. We are hard on ourselves because we feel we should know better.

But the joke is on us. The more you encounter these emotions and the more you apply self knowledge, the more moksha for you! If you never experienced these moods, then what would the moksha be from?! Self knowledge is a tool which can be used to attain moksha in any situation. And like any other tool, the more it is used, the more moksha is available. So moksha is no different than any other learned strategy which ultimately rewires your brain pathways. The more sattvic habits you cultivate, the more sattva will become your default mode network and the more moksha you will have in difficult situations.

I had a perfect example of it today. It was a very stressful day at work, lots of emails flying back and forth and everyone wanted to get stuff off their chest before Happy Hour on Friday . My mind was active constantly but so was self-knowledge and in that craziness, there was moksha available to me right there and then.

When Arjuna eventually fought the good fight in the Mahabharata, I’m sure he went through all the emotions that soldiers go through today in the battlefield, but presumably he also had moksha and detachment from it all right there and then.

Or another way to think of it is, you/the self is always moksha (free), its just that the ‘doer’ appears once in a while and masks this moksha. But never for long. Moksha always within reach and instantly returnable to with self-knowledge.

Even if a vasana binds, moksha is right there too (since it is your nature). And if you claim it, next time that vasana will bind a little less and eventually the vasana will be a pale shadow of its original strength and eventually it will not cover the ever-present moksha (that is you). Like Swami P says, you may wobble, sometimes quite a bit if you are caught in a hurricane, but you won't fall off .

So, lets enjoy the play of life. All the ups and the downs in the game, all of it is a window to your essential mokshaness!

Thanks for this post to start things up again. I think I have shared your insight that moksha is already here to help demystify and clarify my understanding of what it means. But I still consider moksha to be the ultimate experience, and your reference to it later on as being a constantly available state based on permanent knowledge sounds perfectly consistent to me with it being the ultimate experience.

The following is an excerpt from a Ramji stand that I looked up under the search topic "moksha" :

(Note here that Ramji that the context is someone whose "problem" is that the desire for moksha, keeps her from properly sleeping.)

"So you can change your idea of moksa from an event, something you are going to attain by hard work, and see yourself as already free. We call it taking a stand in awareness. If you take a stand in awareness you don’t have to do anything special. You know that desire is unreal, so you don’t act on it unnecessarily. You know that you have nothing to gain by action."

I guess then what I am saying and writing here is that seeing yourself as already free is the ultimate experience, and is constantly available, and like you write, is what occurs when self-knowledge is present.

All the rest of your writing sounded so true. Thanks again for the fresh contribution.

"Even the greatest mahatmas get angry, get agitated, get flustered and so on but they bounce right back because of their deep and abiding self-knowledge."

"When Arjuna eventually fought the good fight in the Mahabharata, I’m sure he went through all the emotions that soldiers go through today in the battlefield, but presumably he also had moksha and detachment from it all right there and then."

Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!

"But some of us seekers, often get upset when we experience the same moods. We say, I have self knowledge, so why did I fall under the spell of rajas or tamas or whatever. We are hard on ourselves because we feel we should know better. "

The funny thing is that this already a story. The story about "we should know better". haha

Here is a nice excerpt from Vivek's satsang with Ramji:

"Hi Vivek, Very interesting story. I had the same thing happen years ago when I cut off the tip or my finger in a planer. I walked to the hospital and let them sew the finger without anesthetic. I didn't feel a thing till much later when I came down into the body. The lesson you learned about the waste of energy creating stories around the events in our lives is the truth. I read about this guy who had open heart surgery like me and it took him two years to recover...probably it took that long to let go of the story he concocted about it. Except for a bit of physical discomfort, my recovery was virtually unemotional because I didn't add anything to the event: they cut some meat and bones, stitched up the wound, gave me some pills and that was that. It had nothing to do with me. If you can't accept reality, you make stories. Of course the essence of the whole thing is your concluding idea; the shift away from stories only comes about through knowledge. I can see your discrimination is perfect.

Experience does not remove illusion. It is easy to see this story generating power of the mind around dramatic incidents but the mind weaves its tales every minute of the day around the most prosaic events...shopping, eating, driving to work, phone conversations, sex etc. It is difficult to keep our head above water as we are literally drowning in a sea of stories"

PS. I personally discovered Focusing as an art to discover the source of reactions and by that dis-empowering them! "In the 1960's, psychologist Dr. Eugene Gendlin wondered why some of his clients undergoing therapy got better - and others did not. True healing he found, occurred when the person listened inwardly to difficult feelings in a special way. He called this step - by - step process, "Focusing."

"Meaning," he realized, was not only thought in the mind. It was also felt in the body. Dr. Gendlin called it a "felt sense" to distinguish this newly discovered meaning from emotion and thinking."